But leading those negotiations for the White House is outgoing Secretary of
Treasury Tim Geithner, whom Monday’s Wall Street Journal
described as a “pragmatic deal maker” because of “his long relationship with
former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, for whom balancing the budget was a
priority over other Democratic touchstones.” ...

Both Rubin and Geithner are hardworking and decent. But both see the world
through the eyes of Wall Street rather than Main Street. I battled Rubin for
years in the Clinton administration because of his hawkishness on the budget
deficit and his narrow Wall Street view of the world.

During his tenure as Treasury Secretary, Geithner has followed in Rubin’s path —
engineering a no-strings Wall Street bailout that didn’t require the Street to
help stranded homeowners, didn’t demand the Street agree to a resurrection of
the Glass-Steagall Act, and didn’t seek to cap the size of the biggest bank,
which in the wake of the bailout have become much bigger. In an
interview with the Journal, Geithner repeats the President’s stated
principle that tax rates must rise on the wealthy, but doesn’t rule out changes
to Social Security or Medicare. And he notes that in the president’s budget
(drawn up before the election), spending on non-defense discretionary items —
mostly programs for the poor, and investments in education and infrastructure —
are “very low as a share of the economy relative to Clinton.” If “pragmatic deal
maker,” as the Journal describes Geithner, means someone who believes any deal
with Republicans is better than no deal, and deficit reduction is more important
than job creation, we could be in for a difficult December.

But leading those negotiations for the White House is outgoing Secretary of
Treasury Tim Geithner, whom Monday’s Wall Street Journal
described as a “pragmatic deal maker” because of “his long relationship with
former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, for whom balancing the budget was a
priority over other Democratic touchstones.” ...

Both Rubin and Geithner are hardworking and decent. But both see the world
through the eyes of Wall Street rather than Main Street. I battled Rubin for
years in the Clinton administration because of his hawkishness on the budget
deficit and his narrow Wall Street view of the world.

During his tenure as Treasury Secretary, Geithner has followed in Rubin’s path —
engineering a no-strings Wall Street bailout that didn’t require the Street to
help stranded homeowners, didn’t demand the Street agree to a resurrection of
the Glass-Steagall Act, and didn’t seek to cap the size of the biggest bank,
which in the wake of the bailout have become much bigger. In an
interview with the Journal, Geithner repeats the President’s stated
principle that tax rates must rise on the wealthy, but doesn’t rule out changes
to Social Security or Medicare. And he notes that in the president’s budget
(drawn up before the election), spending on non-defense discretionary items —
mostly programs for the poor, and investments in education and infrastructure —
are “very low as a share of the economy relative to Clinton.” If “pragmatic deal
maker,” as the Journal describes Geithner, means someone who believes any deal
with Republicans is better than no deal, and deficit reduction is more important
than job creation, we could be in for a difficult December.